THIRTY TYRANTS 



5791 



THIRTY YEARS' WAR 



for practically all foods contain water, health 

 is benefited by the copious drinking of this 

 liquid. Authorities advise the person in normal 

 health to drink six or eight glasses a day. If 

 regular habits of drinking water are cultivated 

 and persisted in, a healthy thirst can be created, 

 and this should be the aim of every one. Such 

 a thirst makes the individual a water drinker in 

 cold as well as in hot weather, when every one 

 drinks freely to offset the loss occasioned by the 

 increase of perspiration. The unnatural thirst 

 that accompanies fever, diabetes and various 

 other diseases is caused by rapid reduction of 

 the body fluids. C.B.B. 



THIR'TY TY' RANTS, a committee from 

 the aristocratic party at Athens, appointed by 

 the Spartans when they gained supremacy after 

 the Peloponnesian War. They were given dic- 

 tatorial power in all matters in the state, and 

 under the brilliant but unscrupulous Critias 

 plotted to establish their rule permanently, in- 

 stalling at Athens a Spartan military governor 

 and garrison. They disarmed all the citizens 

 except their own adherents and put to death 

 many wealthy members of the opposing party. 

 In 403 B.C., after about a year of this> reign of 

 terror, the old democracy was restored. 



THIRTY YEARS' WAR, the last of the 

 great religious wars of Europe. It was really 

 a series of conflicts covering the period between 

 1618 and 1648. Beginning as a civil war in 

 Germany between the Protestant and Roman 

 Catholic parties, it dragged into it one by one 

 most of the nations of Europe, and ended as a 

 general struggle for territory and political 

 power. 



Causes. The underlying cause of the war was 

 the old, deep-seated hostility between the Ger- 

 man Protestants and Roman Catholics, intensi- 

 fied by the different ways in which they in- 

 terpreted the Treaty of Augsburg (1555), 

 especially with reference to Church property. 

 Both parties violated the treaty whenever they 

 had an opportunity. 



The Outbreak in Bohemia (1618-1623). In 

 1608 the Protestants began to get ready for the 

 inevitable clash by organizing the Evangelical 

 Union. The Catholics retaliated with the Holy 

 League. It needed only a special provocation 

 on either side to bring matters to a head. That 

 came when the Archbishop of Prague, the 

 capital of Bohemia, ordered the destruction of 

 a church which the Protestants had begun to 

 build. In anger the people appealed to the 

 king, Ferdinand II. But he was an ardent 

 Catholic and ignored their protests. The ma- 



jority of the populace were Protestants, and 

 they took this as the signal for revolt. The 

 event with which it began is known in history 

 as the Defenestration of Prague. (Defenestra- 

 tion is from the Latin word for window.) It 

 was an old Bohemian custom for the people to 

 punish offending officials by throwing them out 

 of a window, and this treatment the mob ap- 

 plied to two of the king's ministers. This act 

 precipitated the civil war that had so long been 

 threatening. 



At first the Protestants met with success. 

 They drove out the Jesuits and elected Fred- 

 erick, the Palatine elector, as their king. But 

 soon the fortunes of war began to favor the 

 other side. Their own Evangelical Union held 

 back its support out of jealousy, for Frederick 

 belonged to the Calvinists, whereas the Union 

 was strongly Lutheran. To make matters still 

 worse for the popular cause, Ferdinand II a 

 member of the powerful Austrian House of 

 Hapsburg was made Holy Roman emperor 

 shortly after the revolt started, which naturally 

 put new power into his hands. He was thus 

 able to win an overwhelming victory at the 

 Battle of the White Mountain, after which he 

 sent his hosts throughout the length and 

 breadth of Bohemia and the Rhine country, to 

 pillage and destroy, until the insurrection was 

 thoroughly stamped out. In the end the Bo- 

 hemian Protestants were deprived of the special 

 religious privileges they had enjoyed, and Ca- 

 tholicism once more became the religion of the 

 land. 



The Danish Period (1625-1629). With things 

 at such a pass in Bohemia, it was natural that 

 the other Protestant states should begin to look 

 to their own security and consider the necessity 

 of checking the ambitions of their zealous em- 

 peror. It was the king of Denmark, Christian 

 IV, who took the first step. Enlisting the aid 

 of one or two other states, and helped by a 

 subsidy from England, he opposed Ferdinand's 

 forces in Saxony. But the emperor had re- 

 ceived unexpected assistance from a Bohemian 

 ncble named Wallenstein, who raised an im- 

 mense army of adventurers and foreign mer- 

 cenaries. This army he placed at the emperor's 

 service without expense, the understanding be- 

 ing that they were to take payment by plunder- 

 ing as they went. Such an arrangement natu- 

 rally meant untold suffering for the German 

 people, and brought about tragedies that are 

 remembered even to-day, after three hundred 

 years, in the tales the peasants tell their chil- 

 dren. This army, and the force of the Holy 



